Palestine state won't ever exist, says son of Hamas founder

[ad_1] Mosab Hassan Yousef is an unlikely Israeli hero. Because the oldest son of Hassan Yousef, a co-founder of Hamas and its non secular chief within the West Financial institution, Mr Yousef rose by the ranks of the phobia group as a baby and noticed the militants’ atrocities first-hand.

However after a stint in Israeli jails as a teen for smuggling arms, he modified sides, secretly rising as a Shin Guess spy embedded within the terrorist organisation his father helped run – a place he held for nearly 10 years.

Often known as the Inexperienced Prince, Mr Yousef grew to become Israel’s Most worthy asset, sharing important intelligence on suicide bombings, shootings and stabbings throughout one of many bloodiest intervals within the 70-year battle.

He's now one of the vital vociferous critics of the Palestine resistance motion – what he calls “Palestinianism” – and his invectives should not reserved just for Hamas however for practically all civilians within the occupied territories.

Simply because the UK, France, Canada, Portugal and different Western democracies stand poised to formally recognise Palestine as a state on the UN in New York on Monday, Mr Yousef says no such nation exists.

Hassan Yousef based Hamas in 1987 - AFP/Abbas Momani

The case Mr Yousef desires to make will not be a palatable one to many. He believes that Palestine is an “synthetic assemble”, that Palestinians ought to drop their identification if they're ever to thrive, and that “Palestinianism” is a cultish curse that threatens not simply Israel, however the wider world, particularly the West.

“Palestinianism is a political, violent motion, and self-proclaimed Palestinians are those that are profiting out of the Palestinian trigger. They're the perpetrators… these days I make no distinction between Hamas and Palestinians,” he says.

The identification he grew up with, he now rejects in its entirety. The Oct 7 bloodbath and Gaza’s obliteration in its wake, he sees the inevitable consequence of an identification cast in “violence and victimhood”.

“Many of the rapes, atrocities, beheadings, burning individuals, burning corpses; a lot of the atrocities that occurred had been dedicated by Gaza civilians, not the Hamas Nukhba [military wing]. The reality is, Hamas couldn’t management it.”

The October 7 bloodbath and the ensuing Israeli assaults on Gaza are the inevitable consequence of an identification cast in ‘violence and victimhood’, in line with Hassan Yousef - AP /Hatem Ali

Mr Yousef’s story is a exceptional one and though politically he has ended up in the identical camp because the Israeli prime minister, his considering bears little resemblance to that of Bibistim, the identify given to Benjamin Netanyahu’s core base.

Certainly, he thinks the “delusion” his individuals have been trapped in can apply as a lot to them as anybody else, Jews and Christians included. His beef, he says, is with the “sheep” of the world; individuals who blindly observe, relatively than assert their individualism to “save themselves” and others.

“You understand, the sheep goes straight to the slaughterhouse,” he says. “The sheep thinks that the shepherd is their greatest pal. That’s the issue with the sheep. They observe. Why? As a result of the shepherd provides them safety.

“However ultimately, it’s not within the curiosity of the shepherd to avoid wasting the sheep. Sure, they feed them, however solely in order that they qualify for slaughter. And that is the fact of so many individuals. It feels very secure, particularly when you're in a herd. However the herd goes solely in a single course. It’s the fact of most individuals. That is the fact of the world.”

Within the West Financial institution, Mr Yousef witnessed Yasser Arafat, the Egyptian-born founding father of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) encourage his father to do “no matter it takes” to gasoline the second intifada, the 2000-2005 rebellion through which greater than 4,000 individuals (1,010 Israelis and three,179 Palestinians) had been killed.

And in jail, the place he spent greater than 25 months throughout varied stints (a number of within the Hamas safety wing amongst would-be suicide bombers he thwarted), he would deal with labeled paperwork handed down by Yahya Sinwar, the brutal Hamas enforcer who would later change into the mastermind of the Oct 7 bloodbath.

Mr Yousef’s work for the Shin Guess is properly documented. He's credited with serving to cease dozens of suicide assaults and assassinations, saving many lives on each side of the battle.

However much less well-known are his motivations and considering. He sees, for instance, the Oct 7 assault – and specifically the pogrom that adopted it – not as an act of resistance however the inevitable consequence of a political cult lengthy since contaminated with violence.

The rot, he says, begins with firebrands like his father, a “man with good in him” however who “all the time wished to please others” and is as a lot part of the herd as a pacesetter inside it.

As soon as they settle for the precept of violence, it accelerates, first with military targets, then civilians, then stabbings, then suicide bombings, says Mr Yousef. His father was seen celebrating Oct 7, a picture which associates say has deeply affected him.

“They agreed [to violence] solely as a result of they thought it could be treason to say, ‘No’. Not ‘we morally oppose that. It’s not good. It’s not good for our trigger’. We didn't have that. No person talks about it.

“Present me one article of a outstanding Palestinian chief who mentioned, ‘F--- this! This isn't us!’. You understand, even at this time on social media, you don’t discover individuals who converse out. They will’t even make a faux account to speak about it. Nobody. It looks as if all people’s complicit.”

‘Sufferer narrative’ Mr Yousef doesn't doubt the “brutal struggling” of the 2 million individuals in Gaza, and even that “warfare crimes” are being dedicated. However Oct 7, he says, is “what occurs after 36 years of indoctrination, glorifying suicide bombings, glorifying martyrdom, a tradition of homicide [and] the indiscriminate concentrating on of civilians as resistance”.

“What do you suppose? Do you suppose all this collective consciousness pushing violence in goes into the void. In fact not. It’s going to result in the destruction of one thing. And it didn't begin with the Oct 7 assault. It’s an evolution since Hamas got here to energy and earlier than that, with Palestinianism and the sufferer narrative.

“There was the primary intifada, then the second, however nonetheless it was not sufficient. How about now we self-inflict a complete destruction over our individuals, the place we sacrifice and weaponise as many civilians as we are able to. If that is what it's to advertise our trigger, then so be it. Let’s burn all of it all the way down to ashes. That is Sinwar’s technique. And what we're witnessing is the end result of his work”.

Mr Yousef has up to now expressed totally different views on Arabic media, with critics suggesting he's to some extent a chameleon. He as soon as wore a keffiyeh throughout an interview, and on Al-Arabiya he's reported to have mentioned: “we can have our victory in opposition to Israel” and that “Israel is the issue and as an occupation it wants to finish”. Each, nonetheless, had been some years in the past.

His relationship along with his mom, father and 7 youthful siblings ended after he left the Shin Guess, fled to California and wrote a bestselling e-book, Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Selections, which was printed in 2010.

Mosab Hassan Yousef feld to the US in 2007 after admitting he spied for Israel - Getty Photographs/Ahmad Gharabli

“My final dialog with my father was a few days earlier than the e-book was printed. I informed him what to anticipate. At the moment he was in an Israeli jail and when the e-book was printed, the information got here like a tsunami in our city and throughout the Center East. Since then, we haven’t spoken.”

His love for his household is clear and he doesn't doubt the ache he has triggered, saying that his defection “broke bones”. He doesn't remorse what he did, nonetheless, saying it saved his life and virtually definitely his father’s, who's as soon as once more out of jail.

He hopes he could in the future be understood by his mom a minimum of, however sees the divide between them as deep because the battle itself. For the second, they continue to be in “totally different realms”.

“That is after I lose my hope that the battle can ever be reconciled,” he says.

‘Pleasure and thrill’ Mr Yousef is candid about his recruitment to Shin Guess and says it got here from a mixture of motivations. A documentary made about him, The Inexperienced Prince, suggests the turning level got here after he first witnessed the violence Hamas dished out to different prisoners in jail, however he says that is too easy.

“Persons are all the time asking for a turning level. It’s very exhausting for them to hint or observe the chain of occasions that form you. So in jail, sure, it was brutal, and what I witnessed made me ask many questions. But it surely was not solely that. There was the brutality of the broader tradition. The honour killings, the place ladies, in the event that they introduced disgrace on their households, had been slaughtered by their family members, for instance. Why? It’s about disgrace and honour. It’s an influence factor.”

This side, one suspects, would have been felt notably acutely by Mr Yousef, who was raped as a baby by a stranger that his father entrusted to stroll him residence from an olive grove.

There was additionally the thrill of being a spy, the danger taking, the “manipulation and the ability” it conferred. “You understand when an intelligence company is behind you, your conferences should not simply peculiar conferences for espresso. There was no assembly that I didn't have dozens of safety guards and drones and snipers and all kinds of individuals, some seen some invisible about. So that you get into a really, very massive play.

“And I misinform you if I inform you as a teenager, transferring armies out and in, protected by probably the most highly effective intelligence service, that it was solely about saving human lives. There have been different points, many, together with the thrill and the fun.”

The dangers Mr Yousef ran had been extraordinary. Working as his father’s chief support, liable for Hamas within the West Financial institution, his main position was to disrupt and forestall the lengthy sequence of suicide assaults Hamas was planning, typically a number of a day. He sat with bombers getting ready their explosive vests and when he did not cease them, he was despatched video footage of the explosions, so the bombers may rapidly be recognized and their wider networks uncovered.

“We had tons of of these through the second intifada, tons of, so each time when, minutes after the explosion, they acquired [footage of] the suicide bombing scene, I'd obtain it. It’s the ugliest factor you'll be able to think about… now it turns into your private duty... You might be dancing with loss of life on each nook, and the objective is mainly to avoid wasting your personal life and save as many lives as you'll be able to.”

Mr Yousef says the October 7 terror assault is ‘what occurs after 36 years of indoctrination, glorifying suicide bombings’ - Reuters

Mr Yousef owes his life, a minimum of twice over, to Gonen Ben Itzhak, now an Israeli lawyer and outstanding critic of Mr Netanyahu and his authorities. For practically a decade, Mr Itzhak was his handler within the Shin Guess, the agent on the Israeli facet who ran him. He saved his life when, gathered with a few of Hamas’s most senior leaders within the midst of the Intifada, he refused to order a helicopter to bomb a home they had been holed up in.

Later he flew to the US, to testify in Congress that Mr Yousef actually was the Israeli asset he claimed to be, stopping his deportation to Jordan and virtually sure seize by Hamas. The Shin Guess had refused to verify Mr Yousef’s credentials to the US authorities.

Each males gentle up on the point out of the opposite, regardless of their deep political variations. “I all the time honour Gonen for what he's and what he did,” says Mr Yousef. “It is a friendship for eternity that may by no means be compromised by our variations.”

Mr Itzhak agrees, describing their relationship as “deep and unbroken”. He says their politics are “instantly reverse” however suggests they arrive from the identical root – each understanding their very own societies however not totally appreciating life within the different.

Mr Yousef’s evaluation of Palestinian tradition being hopelessly trapped in “victimhood and violence”, equally applies to giant components of Israeli society at this time and, until corrected, may go the identical means, says Mr Itzhak.

“I can by no means see or expertise what he skilled, particularly on the subject of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, so I can't choose him for what he feels or the best way he sees issues. However I see it from the place I'm from and I don’t suppose that he understands fully or deeply what’s happening inside Israel socially and with this authorities, and with the spiritual Proper wing, which, for me, is even a menace to the best way I stay. I’ve informed him however we comply with disagree.”

‘They only need their heroes’ Each males say Mr Yousef’s rhetoric can get the higher of him. “I've my father’s fireplace,” Mr Yousef admits. His public picture – on tv or in debates such because the one held on the Oxford Union final 12 months – can “appear very harsh, however he's probably the most beneficiant, loving particular person, and a totally non-violent particular person”, says Mr Itzhak. “He actually desires an answer. He’s extra average than he seems.”

Each males finally put their religion within the traits that made them so successful in preventing terror: Their willingness to buck the herd, no matter the price, for what they believed was proper and respect for the sanctity of human life.

I ask Mr Yousef what number of lives he thinks he saved whereas working for the Shin Guess, a determine that totally different estimates put between a number of and “hundreds”. For the extra outlandish estimates Mr Yousef is dismissive, saying “they simply need their heroes, and so they wish to glorify their heroes, forgetting in regards to the essence of all the factor”.

He provides: “Most significantly, I saved my very own life. That’s most necessary. Second, I saved my father’s life. Third, I saved, not simply civilian lives however even some terrorist’s lives. I didn't wish to get entangled in blood. I believed one of the simplest ways is to avoid wasting life as a lot as you'll be able to on each side since you can't go flawed by saving a human life. So it was a matter of precept, [although] I’m undecided in regards to the terrorists now.

“Now, what number of lives are saved? One, 10,000, 1,000,000. It actually doesn’t matter. By saving only one life, and even by saving your personal soul from being lower up in darkness, you already saved the humanity inside.”

Mr Yousef is reported to have transformed to Christianity however says it didn't final. He lives by “love thy neighbour” however he's his personal shepherd.

“That is between me and myself as the one official creator of my future, not in relation to a hypothetical entity someplace exterior of me... that is my message to my household and my individuals.”

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